Wyatt Tomson, 4, spent Halloween in the hospital. His neighbours couldn’t live with that
Anyone out for an evening stroll on the residential cul-de-sac of Myers Lane in Burlington on Friday night can be forgiven for thinking they'd somehow gone back in time by a week.
The glowing jack-o'-lanterns at most front doors, the elaborate, ghoulish graveyard displays on front lawns, and the assorted witches, superheroes and Disney characters trick-or-treating door-to-door would have any observer thinking it was Halloween all over again.
In fact, that's exactly what it was.
When neighbours of Wyatt Tomson, 4, learned that the little boy with light brown hair was admitted to Sick Kids over Halloween as doctors tried to figure out the best way to treat his epileptic seizures, they decided to remedy the situation.
Knowing that Wyatt had been looking forward to the Oct. 31 festivities and dressing up as his favourite superhero, Spider-Man, for weeks, the street's residents simply kept all their decorations up for an extra week, or brought them out again, and redid Halloween on Friday night, so that Wyatt wouldn't miss the experience.
There is an overwhelming amount of love that is coming from these people .... Like, look at this!" said Wyatt's mom, Lauren Tomson, gesturing through tears to the dozens of costume-clad neighbours who came out to make sure her son didn't miss out on the Halloween experience.
They have been so supportive and thoughtful and loving our family like it's their own, to be quite honest.
They're just incredible humans.
We're so lucky."
Spider-Man, a.k.a. Wyatt, confirmed his mom's sentiments when he gave a thumbs-up after collecting a huge bag of candy along with his two-year-old sister Wonder Woman, a.k.a. Sloane, from stops at almost all the houses on his street.
It's been a hard few weeks and months for (Wyatt), and for him to be able to go out, and for us to be able to pull this together, is awesome," said neighbour Ashley Sittler, whose three children, aged two, four and six, have grown up with Wyatt and his sister. Halloween this year, for my kids, was the first year I think they actually understood it. And they had so much fun going from house to house, knocking on doors and saying trick or treat.' So, for Wyatt to get to do this with his little sister is so important."
Wyatt's dad, Derek Tomson, dressed as Deadpool, fought to hold back tears as he described how the Halloween redux came about. It was last weekend and Wyatt, who was diagnosed with a challenging form of epilepsy in May, had been at Sick Kids for a couple of days. While doctors did tests and worked on figuring out the proper mix of medications and doses, it started to look as though Wyatt wouldn't make it home in time to go trick-or-treating.
So his dad posted a message in an online group chat of Myers Lane families and asked if he could deliver candy that families could hand out to Wyatt when he returned home from the hospital.
Everyone was immediately like, We're going to put a package together for him. We're going to dress up again for him, and you tell us when and we'll all be there.' Everyone was excited to do it," said Tomson, expressing amazement that even people who weren't on the group thread who had put their Halloween decorations away decided to bring it all back out when they heard about Wyatt.
All for a four-year-old kid. We truly feel like we live on the greatest street in the world."
Kenyon Wallace is a Toronto-based investigative reporter for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @KenyonWallace or reach him via email: kwallace@thestar.ca